Tag Archives: belfast

The theme was Heroic pursuits. My team consisted of 3 other classmates and a programmer named Kevin Beimers (Italic Pig).

We started off by brainstorming the theme, really thinking outside of the box to generate ideas such as:

heroin – an addict whose quest is getting his next fix

unsung hero’s… janitor’s etc.

you play the part of a celebrity trying to escape their fans and the paparazzi.. but to make the character run you had to sing

and many more but on to our main idea…

we chose to look at unsung heroes and went with the idea of a comic book store owner. A customer would come in and ask for a certain issue of whatever comic and it would be your job to find it before they got angry and left. The only problem is that the the back of the store is filled with boxes of unorganised comics. When playing (on a touch screen) you would pick a box and scroll through the piles of comics but if you let go of the screen, you will jump back to the start and if you passed the comic you would also go back to the start. We were aiming to create a game similar to the idea of flappy bird – it’s annoying but completely addictive!

My job was to create some comic book covers, some contain downloadable comic backgrounds:

The link above contains the teams campaign video, descriptions of what it is, why they built it and the journey to date. It contains the steps of how it works along with a brewbot demo video and features of the device.

‘The question on everybody’s mind; what is the Mystery Tin? Well first of all it’s important to know just who’s behind the Mystery Tin and that’s me, Jonny Campbell. I’m a student… a poor student. This has led me to eating some weird and wonderful concoctions in my time.
I once found myself in the kitchen keeled over with hunger with nothing but a spoon and an empty fridge to comfort me. I then remembered about the tin can that had lost it’s identity. What else could I do? This is where the Mystery Tin idea came from… which leads me to believe whatever was in that tin was probably past its sell-by.’

He conducted a social experiment through the internet to create the largest chain reaction of a yawn! – http://theyawningman.com

Another experiment… http://randomtweetisrandom.com – ‘Random Tweet is Random aims to explore how Twitter is used when we take away some of this control. When you tweet with Random, rather than the message being published immediately, it is posted at a random date and time in the future. Care to leave a message with the Gods of randomness?’

Showing the power that social media holds, Campbell tweeted that he won a competition to be Carlie Sheen’s new intern, the tweet went viral! – but the catch being that it was all just a hoax, he hadn’t really won – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-12899356 – “He revealed that his video entry to the competition contained a hidden message, stating that “On March 29th I will lie and say @jonnycampbell won Charlie Sheen’s Internship.” – no-one had noticed! “BBC reports that Campbell planned this hoax because he wanted to show the power of social media.”

Campbell has also developed Performa sports – a real time sports performance analytics for i-pad – with ecliptic labs, http://eclipticlabs.com

“Performa Sports is a powerful easy-to-use performance analysis tool combining the mobility, speed and touchscreen interaction of the iPad with a secure Cloud-based analytics platform. Designed for analysts, coaches, and players the integrated suite of intuitive performance analysis software delivers real-time, accurate recording of data, powerful visual communication and performance tracking over time, with:

Art direction is important as it connects with people on an emotional level, it doesn’t need tone complicated, it can be simple and tangible, it involves all aspects of design taking into consideration the bigger picture and what feels right – not always what looks right.

Here is a good example taken from: http:/http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2006/09/art_direction_w.html “Once we were preparing to brief a photographer for a shoot. The shoot wasn’t spectacular, it was an old guy walking through a wood. The Chairman made loads of great suggestions that morning that helped to form my opinion of what Art Direction is. Here’s one example. I’d visualised the old guy in the photograph wearing dark blue trousers, the Chairman changed them to red. I protested, “Why red? Who wears red trousers? It will look silly?” His thinking was that the red trousers would form a nice contrast to the browns of the wood and would help the main character in the picture stand out. He was right. And it didn’t look silly.

Somehow what is ordinary in real life looks lifeless in print or on TV. Visuals often need to be larger than life to just look ordinary. Images need the spectacular turned up to 10 to have any chance of catching your eye.

I’m not being very clear.

To me, art direction is just that – directing the art. Making sure the images you produce are as beautiful, meaningful and rich as you can make them. Great art direction can evoke emotion and is the difference between this

and this. Does that make sense?

A simple example of art direction is Instagram, if used thoughtfully choosing a filter can be a form of simple art direction, whatever filter is chosen will enhance the meaning of the picture, effects are the tools of art direction – altering the viewers perception of the image to what the art director is trying to create.

Is it visually attractive? Does it fit with the subject? are questions that should be asked, different colours are associated with different words/subjects and will ultimately affect the image created, when faced with the word FOOD and trying to decide a colour for the background, a cool blue would be ill advised as it is better suited (and associated) with medicine, a brighter/exciting colour would be much better – it would be visually appetising.

Jan Tschichold, a typographer stated – “A principle of identity between content and expression” – Art direction elevates and enhances the meaning of what is being created, it feels right, this quote can be seen as summing up the role of an art director in the industry.

We were delighted to win the tender to supply the interpretive graphic design for the whole of Titanic Belfast, which allowed us to work with several international creative teams such as Event Communciations, Paragon Creative and ISO Design. This project required us to use our expertise in interpretive graphic design to inform and engage visitors and to sustain their interest and attention across the 11,000 square metre area of Titanic Belfast. In our design, which ranged from panels to diagrams to infographics, we needed to strike a balance between the celebration of Belfast’s shipyards and the sensitive treatment of Titanic’s sinking.

We designed and produced 210 panels and 1089 individual graphics for the exhibition, including 700 square metres of window graphics. We proofread and typeset over 24,000 words that were supplied to us by Event Communications. We were also responsible for all the image research, selecting and captioning the best 540 out of 2000 images researched.

Titanic Belfast has been a huge success, already drawing more than 200,000 visitors in its first three months. It has had a major impact on tourism to Northern Ireland drawing holidaymakers and cruise ships alike and on the economy and redevelopment of Queen’s Island and the Titanic Quarter.

The result is their interpretation of history in design, they had the chance to try and transport the audience back to the 1900’s through their choice of indoortypography.

Tilden Freeman, an interpretive designer, defined the 6 principles of interpretation in his book entitled, ‘Interpreting Our Heritage’

Any interpretation that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile.

Information, as such, is not Interpretation. Interpretation is revelation based upon information. But they are entirely different things. However all interpretation includes information.

Interpretation is an art, which combines many arts, whether the materials presented are scientific, historical or architectural. Any art is in some degree teachable.

The chief aim of Interpretation is not instruction, but provocation.

Interpretation should aim to present a whole rather than a part, and must address itself to the whole man rather than any phase.

Interpretation addressed to children (say up to the age of twelve) should not be a dilution of the presentation to adults, but should follow a fundamentally different approach. To be at its best it will require a separate program.

The art direction should provoke a reaction from the audience, the reaction that the art director is aiming for.

The image below shows great art direction, through the design of the image – the scaling of the subjects, the angle of the image and the composition all have a greta impact towards the meaning of the poster – road safety!

The image above is inviting and appealing to viewers/potential customers through the hand drawn style of the typography combined with photographs of real objects, resulting in a rustic and wholesome atmosphere being created.

Rob durston is a photographer specialising in advertising and commercial imagery based in Belfast and Los Angeles.

The height of this image gives power to the land, the golfer is tiny in comparison allowing the shot to seem larger as we have something to contrast it with. The power of the land is also enhanced by the dark and light of the green, this contrast with the bright green of the centre drags out the shot allowing for the viewers eye to be drawn to the centre by these lines.

The power the golfer extrudes in the image above comes from the lighting of the sky and position of the camera, the clouds looks closer to the land towards the middle of the image as if they are almost touching, giving a bit of length to the shot, with the darker clouds further enhancing this by creating 3 distinct lines verging to the centre.

In both of the images above the rule of thirds has been obeyed, with the golfer being placed in the left of the shot

This shot too follows the rule of thirds with the land lying within the bottom third and the focal point being between the hotspots on the right, the eye is drawn across by the shadow lying along the rocks, the contrast between the shadows and the light caught my attention and the fog just hovering in certain places makes this photo more interesting to the viewer.

We began by getting a sheet of acetate and drawing out a grid then stuck it to window, we had to draw what was physically there in our grids rather than what we thought we saw.. This exercise then lead to us drawing another grid on acetate, again it was stuck to the window but we then drew another slightly smaller grid onto paper and drew what was within the grid..

This image is slightly off as I wasn’t directly in front of the grid I had stuck to the window so my frames were completely different from one another but below is my second attempt with the correct frame shape… the hardest part was the layering, it got to the point where I couldn’t tell what belonged to which building, it was all merging as one outline…

Still a bit rough and not much detail, as I’m still wrapping my head around the whole perspective concept but plenty more practice will certainly fix that!